No Lifeguard on Duty

by Janice Dickinson

  I had no money, of course. I’d spent the bulk of my nest egg on that cab to JFK. I found a small corner grocery store and went inside and bought some blueberry yogurt and told myself it was the best yogurt I’d ever had. It probably was, but it didn’t exactly do the trick.

  I got back to the agency at dusk, desperate for a friend. Dominick was out. Everyone else was busy.

  I went to my attic. Making my way up the stairs felt like some kind of punishment, though I couldn’t for the life of me understand what crime I’d committed.

  My roommates—the ones who’d seemed so charming the night before, in that champagne haze—turned out to be unpleasant in the extreme. They had been in Paris longer. Knew their way around. Had better portfolios. More money. Rich Eurotrash boyfriends who took them shopping at Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and St. Laurent. And each night they’d go off to Castel’s, Club Set, Le Bain Douche.

  I wasn’t invited along. Not that night nor the next nor the night after that. It was okay, though. I couldn’t be bothered. Really. I mean, I was a married woman, right? I wasn’t going to let my morals be corrupted by the living arrangements in this bordello of beautiful women.

  So I sat down one night and wrote a long letter to my husband. “Dear Ron,” it began. “I love you and I don’t want to lose you.” Given that he still hadn’t apologized for his little indiscretion, I thought that was going well beyond the call of duty. But I did love him. I went on to tell him what an amazing human being he was, how happy he’d made me, how he had come along and changed my luck and life. “I owe you,” I wrote. “But you owe me, too.” I asked him to please clean himself up. His lifestyle was going to destroy us. And I really, truly didn’t want to lose him.

  In the days ahead I trudged through a string of go-sees, all of them as underwhelming as the first one at Marie-Claire (and eerily reminiscent of the go-sees in New York). I went to department stores I’d never heard of. Magazines I’d never heard of. Met with characters who looked dangerous and desperate. But the department stores didn’t want me, and the magazines didn’t want me, and the dangerous characters weren’t desperate enough for me.

  I’d return at the end of the day for more abuse. My roommates talked as if I wasn’t there. They talked about Paul’s huge cock. Or Pierre’s little one. Or about Ahmed, the Saudi prince who liked to take care of himself, loudly, as he watched.

  They showed off their new dresses. Their new jewels. Their new shoes.

  I hated the sound of their voices. Their laughter. I couldn’t wait for them to go to their fucking snooty nightclubs with their trashy, overcologned boyfriends so I could sit alone in my lumpy little corner bed in that claustrophobic little cell.

  By that second Friday, I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was a TV downstairs, and I found myself watching a rerun of I Love Lucy, in French. I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned off the TV. It was eleven o’clock and I was wide awake and lonely. I went into the reception area and picked up the phone and got through to an operator who spoke English and made a collect call to the only home I had…Ron answered. I could hear voices in the background—high-pitched voices.

  “Hey, baby!” Ron said. “How’s Paris treating you?”

  “Great,” I said. “Did you get my letter?”

  “Oh, yeah, babe,” he said. “Great letter. Loved it.”

  Great letter? Loved it? Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Sounds like you’re having a party.”

  “No,” he said. “A few of the boys came over for a little poker.”

  I did the math. It was a little after five p.m. in New York. Ron and the boys were off to an awfully early start. On the other hand, you never knew with them. Maybe they were still partying from the night before. Then I heard a woman’s laughter, the sound of breaking glass, more laughter. I hung up.

  I picked up the phone and dialed another number. Guy answered. The airbrush genius. “It’s Janice,” I said. “I know it’s late and I’m not sure you remember—”

  “What are you talking about, late? I was just getting ready to go out. Sit tight. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  He was there in eleven. Not that I was counting. He asked if I was hungry, and took me to the Brasserie Lipp, which to this day is one of my favorite places in the world. He ordered the assiette de fruits de mer for two. Suddenly I was one of those people. Eating oysters, mussels, shrimp, munching on crab legs. The wine flowed; he ordered a very nice Sancerre. I was in heaven.

  Of course, as they say, there’s no free lunch. And I guess that goes double for dinner. I went back to Guy’s place. I was torn. But not badly torn.

  “You don’t understand,” I said, vacillating. “I’m a married woman.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t understand,” he said. “That doesn’t bother me in the least. And I have a girlfriend. And it probably doesn’t bother her. And if it does, that’s not my problem.”

  That right there is the difference between European men and American men. Don’t ask me if I like it. I’m not sure I like it. No, in fact, come to think of it, I hate it. There’s real arrogance there. Then again, the arrogance is coupled with disarming honesty. I fuck who I want to fuck when I want to fuck, and fuck anyone who’s bothered by it.

  Call me crazy. We fucked. And it was pretty fucking good.

  I woke up the next morning to see Guy sneaking out with his motorcycle helmet under his arm. A moment later I hear his moped starting up in the alley below and puttering away. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep and half an hour later he walked into the bedroom with breakfast on a tray. Fresh strawberries, buttery croissants, slices of glistening ham, and an assortment of the finest cheeses. And the best French coffee in the world, which we drank out of huge, handleless mugs. I mean, God—me, Cinderella! I used to have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub floors. Now look at me! This was the life. I loved France. I loved French room service. And I especially loved French men: They may cheat on their women, yes—but they sure know how to treat ’em.

  We spent the entire weekend together. With service like that, it wasn’t hard.

  Guy told me I was going to make it. But it was all about the photographers, he said. That was the key. You have to get endorsed by the name shooters. They’re the ones who pick and choose the models for both the fashion shoots and the prestige designers. They know who’s hot today and who’s going to be hot tomorrow. “Get the photographers behind you, and you’ll soar,” Guy assured me.

  He mentioned Jacques Malignon and Patrick Demarchelier. He liked Alex Chatelein, too. He said Pierre Houles was doing some incredible work for Elle. And Guy Bourdin was just a genius—incredible. “Mike Reinhardt is very good, too. Maybe even great. You have to meet Mike. He’s part of that same French Mafia. He’s half the time in New York, half in Paris.”

  I told him I’d already met Mike, and that I disliked him intensely. Mike was the sonofabitch who’d treated me like a piece of furniture for forty-five minutes, refusing even to acknowledge my existence. Bastard hadn’t even offered me a hit off his joint.

  “That sounds like Mike,” he said. “He can be as difficult and self-absorbed as the women he shoots.”

  The Monday after my wild weekend with Guy, my luck began to change. I got a call about doing a shoot for DIM, a well-known stocking company. The money was lousy, they said—but it was like now, this second. So I found my way over to the studio and a perverted little photographer half-greeted me at the door. He led me inside, pawing me, touching me, and started blathering away in French. I didn’t understand a word, so I just nodded and smiled a lot and put up with his restless hands until the makeup girl came along to do what she had to do.

  Within an hour my hair had been poofed out to here, my eyebrows had been plucked to within a centimeter of their lives, and I was standing in front of the bright lights in fuck-me pumps, a one-piece dress open to the waist, and DIM pantyhose with no underwear. The pervy little photog
rapher barked at one of his assistants and suddenly there was a huge roar and I got hit with a blast from the biggest wind machine I’d ever seen in my life. I thought I was going to get blown right through the wall, but somehow—with my hair blowing back, and the dress lifted clear off my body like a sail—I managed to smile smile smile…And then, boom!—it was over. Zenk you for coming, American bitch.

  I got back to the office, feeling a little insecure and hoping for a bit of positive feedback, but they had no time for feedback. French Playboy was doing a fashion spread with Jacques Zolti, who at that moment was the most sought-after male model in France. The Silversteins had pushed hard, and the people at Playboy had shown my photos to Michel Berton, the photographer. He loved me. The genius!

  They weren’t paying much either—nobody was paying much, that’s what the strike was about—but I didn’t give a rat’s ass. Work was work, money was money.

  I met Jacques and Michel at the Paris airport—Jacques with a bushy trademark mustache, Michel with the harried look of a photographer with too much on his mind—and we took a small plane to La Rochelle, in the south of France. On the way, I sat next to Jacques, who was very charming—didn’t come on to me at all. He was even nice to the giggly young girl who came over during the flight and asked for his autograph.

  We arrived late and were put up in a small pensione. We had a light dinner and some wonderful red wine and were told to get a good night’s sleep. “We start first thing in the morning.”

  In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a noise at the window. I looked up, startled. Jacques, grinning his bushy grin, was climbing through. I leapt out of bed and whacked him with the pillow and he toppled out. Luckily, we were on the ground floor. I looked out at him. He was unhurt, at least physically.

  “But women find me irresistible!” he complained.

  “Not this woman,” I said.

  He smiled. I smiled. We understood each other.

  The shoot went flawlessly. It had this sort of barnyard motif. I changed in and out of clothes and posed with cows and chickens and even did a Little Bo Peep number with a lamb. It didn’t look like much—it didn’t even feel like work—but it nailed the cover.

  When I got back to Paris, the work kept coming.

  IN EUROPE I BECAME OBSESSED WITH SELF-PORTRAITS AND LEICA CAMERAS.

  I was flown to the Club Med in Martinique for a spread in Marie-Claire, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I shot in the Loire Valley. In castles mountains vineyards rivers rooftops. I was everywhere.

  Then the results of that DIM stocking shoot hit the streets. I remember it with incredible clarity. I was leaving Guy’s apartment one morning and I’d barely reached the sidewalk when I thought, I’m hallucinating. A bus was just going by. I was on the side of the bus. Me. My dress and hair flying, my long stockinged legs out there for all the world to see. I watched the bus round the corner and disappear from view. Jesus! I ran back to the apartment, and Guy was in the shower, and I was so excited I couldn’t get the words out.

  “It’s me! There was a big picture of me on a bus!”

  Guy laughed and hugged me. “What did you expect, ma petite? I told you you were going to make it.”

  He didn’t understand. Three months ago, I was getting every door in New York slammed in my face. Now I was everywhere. Billboards. Shopping malls. Every magazine in Europe. Elle. Marie-Claire. Marie-France. I felt powerful. Invincible. I felt like I did that first time I’d done coke, back in New York, with Ron. Only it wasn’t wearing off. I wasn’t coming down. And every time I saw a new shot of me, I’d get that little cocaine rush all over again.

  And it didn’t stop with DIM. There I was in Playboy. There I was in Marie-Claire. There I was in Elle. There I was in Vogue France. I was on top of the world. I would rush out to the nearest newsstand and buy half a dozen copies of each magazine and take them back to Guy’s place and pore over them. See, I’d tell myself. I knew you could do it. Still, the elation was short-lived. Before long, that little voice inside started casting the usual aspersions. You were just lucky. You don’t deserve this. It’s a fluke. Then I’d take a closer look at the photographs and see nothing but flaws. Too much makeup. Look at the baby fat in your face. You better cut back on the push-ups, girl—those arms are getting way too buff. I couldn’t even enjoy my success. I was turning into my own father.

  “What’s wrong?” Guy asked me one night. I was in that dark, self-destructive place.

  “Nothing,” I said. What was I going to say? I was up one minute, down the next. Soaring and crashing and crashing and soaring; the roller coaster from hell.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “The photographers love you. Just keep working them.”

  Okay. Deep breath. Work the photographers. I went off to work Alex Chatelein, one of my favorites in those early days. Alex had started out as a painter, but he couldn’t sell much and decided to try his luck with photography. One of his first jobs had been as Richard Avedon’s assistant—what an incredible education. He was another member of the French Mafia, and a good friend of Mike Reinhardt’s. He kept telling me I should work with Mike when I got back to New York. I wondered why everyone kept pushing Mike on me.

  “You look wonderful,” he said. And I was flying.

  I saw the pictures a few days later: I crashed.

  When I was back in Paris, home between assignments, I usually stayed with Guy. He was insatiable. I knew there were other girls, but I didn’t care enough to ask. It wasn’t like I was falling in love with him. After all, I was a married woman—not that my husband seemed to remember. He never called. I’d lost him.

  One night, Guy took me to the Tour D’Argent, one of the most fabulous restaurants in Paris. It was such a well-heeled crowd, a long long way from ham sandwiches and brewskis. And it made me think: I guess fame is the great equalizer. These folks didn’t care that I was poor, white trash. Or at least they didn’t care enough to notice me. Or maybe they didn’t notice me. Or maybe I was having a good night; maybe I passed as one of “them.”

  “What are you thinking about?” Guy asked me.

  “That I deserve this,” I said.

  Toward the tail end of dinner, he announced that his girlfriend was on her way back to Paris. I don’t know what he expected. Tears? I wasn’t upset. As I said, Guy was all about recreational sex. And that’s all I’d ever wanted from him.

  “I’m not going to get all bent out of shape,” I told him. “I knew this was coming.”

  I think he was a little disappointed—men love it when women fall apart over them—but he hid it well. “You know something, Janice? You’re amazing.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not going to make a scene?”

  “Tell you the truth, I’m more concerned about living arrangements.”

  I was sick of the “charming” girls from the Christa attic. I was always running into them at the clubs around town. They’d come over and fawn and tell me how fabulous I looked and go on and on about whatever layout they’d seen on the stands. And I would grin my alligator grin and hate them. Power does corrupt, I guess. And I had power. I was taking Paris by storm. And some of the girls, well—all they had was their masturbating Arabs. One of those poor things was so strung out on heroin she’d started hooking to keep the cash flowing. She looked worse than I’d looked on that fateful morning of the Christa cattle call. A lot worse.

  “I’d still like to see you from time to time,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Does your girlfriend mind?”

  After dinner, we went to Castel’s, a way-hot club, and bumped into John Casablancas. Casablancas ran Elite, a very happening Paris-based modeling agency. He told Guy that Mike Reinhardt had just done a fabulous shoot for him. Guy introduced us. Casablancas couldn’t have been less impressed. He looked me up and down with zero interest. That was his style. It was his way of telling me I’d never make it.

  “What an asshole,” I told Guy after
he left.

  “It’s his loss,” he said.

  I could have fucked Guy then and there. In fact, that’s what I did.

  At the end of the week, just before Guy’s girlfriend arrived, I went to Noumea, New Caledonia, for a bikini shoot. (I really didn’t have to worry about living arrangements much; I was never “home.”) Benny Truitman was the photographer. He was a fat, mischievous guy who had made a name for himself taking pictures of Fiats, and I knew I was a lot better-looking than any car he’d ever photographed. He had one shot where he got me in the ocean, half under water, half out—he had a camera made especially for the occasion—and there was a fucking great white shark hovering in the background. I didn’t know about the shark until one of the assistants told me to get the hell out of the water. Which I did. With alacrity. I love that word: alacrity. Go look it up in the dictionary.

  After a quick trip to Thailand for Marie-Claire, with Patty Oyai, another model, I took the train to Saint-Tropez to meet the great Helmut Newton. I checked into the beautiful hotel and there was no one around and I went outside and sat by the pool and had a drink. There was a cool breeze blowing and I felt very peaceful. Life was good. I closed my eyes for a minute and enjoyed the feel of the sun on my skin. When I opened them, I saw this old guy watching me from across the pool. We were the only two people around. He kept staring at me. I ignored him and lit another cigarette and looked away.

  He came toward me. He looked like a horny old fucker, out to ruin my perfect afternoon. I wished he’d go away.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  “What!?”

  An elegant middle-aged woman had come out of the hotel and was watching us from near the door.

  “You heard me,” the man said. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Fuck you, you dirty old perv!” I said.

  I got up and stormed off. As I was approaching the hotel, I noticed that the woman was smiling. I didn’t understand what was so goddamn amusing. When I was within earshot, she said, “Helmut can be so difficult.”